Customer Reviews

Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Deffeyes hits the nail on the head when he clearly details what petroleum industry insiders already know - it's not "if" global oil production will peak, it's "when." After years of warning about the imminent demise of cheap oil supplies, experts are now splitting hairs about whether or not inexpensive oil production will peak in this decade or the next. The author's easy-going, occasionally humorous prose makes the bad news easier to take, but either way, a serious global oil crisis is looming on the horizon.

Deffeyes energizes his readers by sweeping us easily through the denser strata of the complexities and developmental progress that built "Big Oil," but he also warns of relying on technology to save us in the future. Unlike many technological optimists, this life-long veteran of the industry concludes that new innovations like gas hydrates, deep-water drilling, and coal bed methane are unlikely to replace once-abundant petroleum in ease of use, production, and versatility. The Era of Carbon Man is ending.

A no-nonsense oilman blessed with a sense of humor, Deffeyes deftly boils his message down to the quick. Easily-produced petroleum is reaching its nadir, and although they are clean and renewable, energy systems like geothermal, wind and solar power won't solve our energy needs overnight. "Hubbert's Peak" represents an important aspect of the energy crisis, but it is only one factor in this multi-faceted problem that includes biosphere degradation, global warming, per-capita energy decline, and a science/industry community intolerant of new approaches to energy technology research and development. An exciting new book by the Alternative Energy Institute, Inc., "Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century," addresses all of the components associated with the energy dilemma and is also available on Amazon.com.

Anyone who is concerned about what world citizens, politicians, and industry in the United States and international community must do to ensure a smooth transition from dependence on dangerous and polluting forms of energy to a more vital and healthier world, needs to read these books. Future generations rely on the decisions we make today.

Kenneth Deffeyes, Princeton professor and former oil field geologist, tells the story of oil, right up to the beginning of the demise of oil. He takes the methods developed by M. King Hubbard, the man who accurately predicted the peak in U.S. oil production, and applies them to world oil production. The book makes absolutely riveting reading. The first few chapters deal entirely with the source and production of oil. I kept wondering, as I was reading these chapters, what has this to do with Hubbert's Peak and the coming decline in oil production? Then it began to dawn on me, one has to know everything about oil to accurately predict the future production of oil. Deffeyes is that man and he covers every possible base. Many say "Just drill deeper" or "There is oil in the deep ocean", but Deffeyes shows why drilling deeper can yield natural gas but not one drop of oil and why oil from deep ocean sediments is impossible. Deffeyes leaves no stone unturned and covers every possible source of oil.
Deffeyes expects the peak in world oil production at around 2005 but says it could come as early as 2003 or as late 2006. There is a fair amount of jitter in the year-to-year production so picking the exact peak is difficult. But he reminds us that the center of the U.S. Best fit curve was 1975 and the actual peak came in 1970. He says however, there is nothing plausible that could postpone the peak until 2009.
Of course Kenneth Deffeyes is not the only oil field geologist that is predicting an impending peak in world oil production, Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrere and several others have been doing that for several years. The data supporting the impending peak and decline is sometimes difficult to interpret but Deffeyes lays the data out in undeniable terms and in such a manner that the average layman can understand it.
The only problem I had with the book was I felt Deffeyes was overly optimistic as to the effects of the coming decline in world oil production. He sees only a decade or so of difficulties until we get over our dependence on crude oil. Many others however, who have looked more closely at the possibility of alternate sources of energy to replace cheap portable oil, find no possible replacement. And....most of these see nothing short of a worldwide holocaust a few years after the peak. They say the world's six billion people are supported by a network of food production and transport that will be impossible to maintain when oil production begins to drop and the price of the remaining oil begins to rise dramatically.
But by all means, BUY THIS BOOK. Not only will it convince you of the inevitability of the impending peak and decline in oil production, but also it will give you the ammunition and data to convince those around you, to convince them and give them time to make preparations for....for something I find too hard to even imagine.

While millions of environmentally concerned Americans are ready to vilify on reflex what Molly Ivins flippantly dubs "the oil bidness," Kenneth Deffeyes thinks of the petroleum fields as a place of high spirits and high romance. But, having spent half his life working for Shell, and half of it training later generations of fossil fuel hunters, he is here to break the bad news to us gently. And the news is, the party's over. The days of derring-do among the derricks are just about done.

Thirty years ago, U.S. oil production peaked, and has been declining ever since. Shortly, world oil production will hit the same peak, and begin to decline. That doesn't mean there will be no oil left; thirty years after hitting its own peak, the U.S. is still the second largest oil producer in the world. But it does mean that demand will outstrip supply, and that means the economic dislocations of the late 70s - the spiking prices, the long gas lines, the deep recession - will become permanent. Eventually, other sources of energy, both renewables and plentiful fossil fuels like natural gas, will fill in the breach. But it will be a long and painful process, requiring a ton of capital investments in research and in infrastructure that a suddenly poorer first world will be ill able to afford.

"Shortly", Deffeyes argues, means in one to six years, and probably in the early part of that range. One can quibble with some of his arguments for that timing. With luck, he acknowledges, there may be one significant set of oil fields yet to be discovered, in the South China Sea (unexplored so far because the competing jurisdictions of the several nearby island nations have made contracts hard to nail down.) And I don't think he's given sufficient weight to the fact that all the oil recovery in the Middle East is still "primary", using old-fashioned pumping technology. But if all the quibbles are granted, it only affords the world economy another five or ten years of grace.

So, if Deffeyes is wrong, the time to start making those massive investments and changes is today. If he is right, the time to start making them is ten years ago, and all we can accomplish by swift action is to make the period of intense pain a decade or two shorter. Though Professor Deffeyes isn't political enough or impolite enough to say so, Clinton (for all his green talk) failed to provide any leadership to reduce our dependence on petroleum. And his successor, of course, is providing energetic leadership, but all of it is geared to marching us all double-time into still more rapid consumption of what little oil is left. History will remember neither President Slick, nor President Oil Slick, any more kindly than it now remembers Herbert Hoover for fiddling while the fuse that would set off the Great Depression burned.

The book is an easy read, short and set in a conversational style that permits the reader to glide through the more technical portions if so inclined. The technical details and the mathematical arguments could be tighter, and the folksiness, which would be delightful in a lecture room, is occasionally a bit much on the written page. For those reasons, it would be easy to give the book only four stars. But those faults are inseparable from the book's virtues. They're compromises Deffeyes chose to make in order to be accessible to a wide audience, and his book deserves to reach one.

If environmentalists take Deffeyes' message seriously,they'll realize that we will soon be so starved for oil that ANWAR is certain to be plundered, and that nuclear plants are certain to sprout across the landscape like, well, like mushrooms. If Deffeyes is on or near target, nothing can prevent those developments. Greens today should be using ANWAR and an expanded nuclear industry as bargaining chips, to be traded for strict CAFE standards, investment in renewable technologies, non-industry oversight of nuclear safety, and (since the near term alternative will be coal) investment in natural gas pipeline infrastructure.

There is far more to petroleum geology than I had ever imagined. Deffeyes gives us a discussion of how oil was formed -- and where it is found -- in articulate, lucid, and detailed prose. And the style is what I would expect from an oil man -- very direct, not a hint of hysteria, no fluff, and in places, really quite funny.

The book could only have been written by someone intimately familiar with the field, from a practical standpoint and from an academic standpoint. His first points -- the world supply is limited, and it's almost all been found -- are inarguable. His second points -- the production curve is symmetric, and lags the discovery curve by about eleven years -- depend more on economics and are more open to question. Nevertheless, the conclusion remains the same: the party is almost over. Whether it ends in 2004 or 2020 is immaterial.

Read the book; think about what it says; and factor its conclusions into your life.

OVERVIEW
Hubbert's Peak gives the reader a geologist's perspective on the scarcity of oil by describing the uncommon series of events required to form exploitable oil reservoirs. He also discusses exploration and drilling methods. Against this background the book explains how almost all of the world's potential oil-containing geologic regions have been explored and that the rate of oil discovery peaked in the mid Twentieth Century. New discoveries have not kept up with production and are only a fraction of current consumption.

For the central argument of the book, Deffeyes revisits Hubbert's bell shaped curve of oil production/depletion and discusses better fitting models using recent data. Deffeyes concludes, along with other prominent geologists, that the peak in world production will occur in the next few years.

SUMMARY
Early chapters discuss how oil was formed from organic deposits on the bottoms of ancient sea under rather rare conditions of low oxygen levels. The concept of the "oil window" is explained: the temperature conditions necessary to transform the organic matter into oil require the organic rich strata to have sunk beneath the earth's surface to a sufficient depth to achieve the necessary temperature to form oil, but not so deep as to overheat and chemically transform the oil into gas. A brief discussion of the chemistry of oil is included.

Subsequent chapters deal with geological conditions that allow oil to collect in pools. This requires sufficient void space in the oil-containing formation for oil to flow and a cap layer that is sufficiently impervious to keep the oil from escaping. Finally, folds and faults form traps that provide an opportunity for oil to concentrate.

The book then progresses to oil finding methods, ranging from visible oil seeps, early trial and error, gravity anomaly, electrical resistance well logging and seismic exploration. The chapter on drilling methods also briefly discusses reservoir development and enhanced recovery techniques.

The final background chapter relates oil field size and discovery. The point is made that a significant fraction of all oil discovered was in giant fields. Due to their extensive area, giant fields were relatively easy to find, were discovered early, and in decreasing numbers over time. Today most new fields are small, and although they are discovered in large numbers, the total amount of oil discovered continues to decrease.

The central argument of the book is that the peak in world oil predicted by Hubbert will occur within the next few years. Deffeyes revisits Hubbert's Curve and discusses alternate models (logistic, Gaussian and Lorentz distributions) and provides some projections of ultimately recoverable oil.

Concluding chapters discuss the future of fossil fuels and alternate energy. Deffeyes cites financial ill effects of declining fossil fuels which includes decline of petrochemical industries and, most importantly, of nitrogen fertilizer production (Note: Nitrogen fertilizer production in the U.S. became uneconomical since the book's publication. We are now relying heavily on imports. ) He also discusses alternate sources such as oil sands and oil shale and points out they are not really oil but can be converted to oil, and that oil produced from them yields only a fraction more energy than it takes to produce.

The chapter on alternate energy discusses the recognized top contenders: geothermal, nuclear, wind, water and solar/photovoltaic.

The final chapter discusses the efficiency at which we use energy based on the laws of thermodynamics.

Commentary:

It is a matter of historical record that "conventional" oil production has peaked or is in decline in almost all oil producing regions. History also shows that oil discoveries have lagged production for decades and the trend continues down.

Significant excess capacity exists only in Saudi and Iraq; however, consumption appears likely to exceed combined conventional and unconventional production before the peak occurrs.

If the scenario presented in Hubbert's Peak does materialize on the time scale projected, the shock to the world's economy will be severe beyond belief. The U.S. is already loosing petrochemical industries (ammonia, methanol) and other energy intensive industries such as aluminum production. The price of oil has almost doubled, in constant dollars, from it's historical value, while natural gas prices have risen several hundred percent. The value of the U.S. dollar is falling, largely due to the trade deficit, a large fraction of which is caused by energy imports.

Strengths of the book:
Good explanation of the geology of oil formation
Good description of exploration and production
Well illustrated with numerous drawings, maps and photographs
Provides plenty of technical detail for someone with an engineering background

Shortcomings of the book:
The book could have provided enough coverage of unconventional oil* to avoid confusion of other reviewers who have seen asymmetrical depletion curves with "fat tails", implying slower depletion rates than indicated by bell curve models. Fat tailed models need to be analyzed to make sure that they do not cover expanded geographical areas and they do not include low net energy enhanced recovery methods.

The final chapter on using energy efficiently avoided an in depth explanation of the laws of thermodynamics. To understand improving energy efficiency one has to understand what efficiency means in thermodynamic terms. Also, to really understand why the energy situation is serious, one has to understand the limitations imposed by thermodynamics. Understanding thermodynamics makes the concept of net energy, resource quality and "Best First Principle" self-evident. When you understand these concepts, you will appreciate the crisis humanity is facing.

* The primary unconventional sources are deepwater oil (greater than 500 meters) and natural gas liquids, and lesser sources are refinery gains, heavy oil and oil sands. See Colin J. Campbell's graph titled "All Hydrocarbons (easily found on the Internet).

Kenneth Deffeyes has an engaging entertaining syle and is a gifted teacher. A professor emeritus of geology at Princeton, he was born to an oil family in Oklahoma and worked at Shell during the glory days of M. King Hubbert. This is an oil man, and a top level academic thinker.

I earnestly recommend that you read this book if you are interested in energy issues. If you complete the book and understand the details (no small task in some of the chapters), you will have a high level of understanding of the salient details of oil and natural gas exploration, recovery and refining. You will know why major deep ocean oil deposits are extremely unlikely. You will know what a source rock is, and how it must be positioned at the appropriate depth range in the earth to make oil; drilling deeper is not going to help us. In short, you will feel like you have completed a postgraduate course in petroleum geology. For $12 for the paperback version, it's quite a deal.

The book deals in hard facts; it has no discernable ideological bent. But is does makes a compelling case that global oil production will peak sometime between 2003 and 2009, and that society will be in for a resulting shock. If you are a doubter, take my challenge and read this book.

I am a geophysicist who has worked with some of the technologies that Mr. Gilmer writes about, and they are not going to save us. My question to Mr. Gilmer is this: if we can exploit the oil that he speaks of, why aren't the oil companies doing it? They are buying back stock, increasing dividends and hoarding cash, but they have not substantially increased exploration budgets. I think oil companies know what Dr. Deffeyes knows; Hubbert's peak will come sooner rather than later.

An absolutely outstanding book. It looks like oil production may have peaked right before this book is published. "Oil and gas journal" showed the production in 2000 was 67,003,000 barrels a day and in 2001 was 66,599,000 and in 2002 was 65,946,000. Unless this is a temporary drop the oil production peak WAS reached in 2000. Another event that is happening that few people had predicted is the hunger for oil in China. China is the second largest oil-consuming nation and oil use there is increasing at an annual rate of over 10%. Hopes for large oil finds in China didn't pan out and China is rapidly increasing it's oil imports. So far this year China is importing 30% more oil than same time last year.

This is an important book for anyone wanting an informed view of the impending oil shortage. For me the book has significant strengths and a couple of relative weaknesses. First, Deffeyes discusses the methodology for forecasting oil resources and production rates over time (including footnotes, Chap 8). Deffeyes does not provide any new estimates, but references (Ref 2, Chap 1) published predictions up to 1998. Second, Deffeyes provides a detailed description of the geology and engineering methods for oil discovery and extraction. For the lay reader this could be heavy going, but Deffeyes does a good job of providing relevant information in a stimulating manner, often through amusing asides, which work most of the time. This material establishes that it is most unlikely there is a major oil field "waiting" to be discovered. Third, the book is well referenced which encourages further exploration of this important topic. For me some questions were unanswered. It is shown (p5) that production will peak in about 2004 to 2009, but there is no discussion of how the increasing cost of oil may affect future consumption and the ultimate end of the oil era (2075, 2100 ?). As oil impacts mainly on road transport there is no discussion of hydrogen-based (eg fuel cells) alternative energy sources (Chap 10). There is very little discussion of Natural Gas (closely related to oil as a resource and able to provide efficient electricity generation)and the scope for it to ease the transition out of the oil era. The discussion of alternative energy sources (Chap 10) is rather superficial and contains no economic or environmental assessment. On balance, this is a valuable contribution to everyone's assessment of their individual and our collective futures.

As a scientist (physics/eletrical engineering) with essentially zero knowledge of petroleum or geology I found the book very informative and readable.

Other reviewers criticise Deffeyes for not providing all the answers for how this is gonna play out, but I didn't mind that part. I accept that he neither has all the answers or a crystal ball.

What he does have, is a lifetime of experience in the oil business and a lot of knowledge about how oil is formed in nature, trapped in rocks, discovered, recovered, and refined.

I thought he did a very good job of sharing that knowledge, and convincing me that there is a real problem coming -- probably within the next 10 years -- and that we'd better start paying attention.

The book provides a good foundation so the intelligent lay reader can participate in the inevitable public policy debates, and formulate their own opinions about how we can best soften the blow, when gas hits $5 or $10 a gallon.

For what it's worth, I really liked his writing style. Short clear sentances about complicated ideas, with just enough annecdotes to keep the book enjoyable. It reads like a fascinating dinner conversation, rather than an accademic lecture.